🚫🙅♂️(the "insecure" one, it's a bit small to make out) 🤳 and 🛌 for Jonathan;
🙊💚✍ for Alex, please? :o)
This isn’t a complicated ask at all! ;-)
🙈what’s my muse’s biggest blind spot?
After the War, Rick is paranoid about safety, but he doesn’t really realize it. He’s so in the habit of looking after people under his command that when stressed or in a dangerous situation, he tends to give orders and expect people to obey him. This is why, when Evelyn refuses to stay safely in Fort Brydon while he and Jonathan go to fetch Dr. Chamberlain, he locks her in her room.
🚫what is one thing my muse wouldn’t want someone else to know about them?
Rick is ashamed of the way he acted when he fell apart, between leaving the Legion and meeting the Carnahans. He got into a lot of fights, drank himself unconscious most nights, and slept around more than he should have, and always felt guilty about his bad behaviour. It’s not something he wants to go into detail with with Evie, though she knows the bones of the story.
🙉what are two things that make my muse uncomfortable in conversation
Rick hates it when people, especially the upper crust whose circles they run in as Evie’s career grows, comment on his origins and lack of formal education. He doesn’t see the shame in being born to a hard-working single mother or learning from the school of life, and he hates the way some people deliberately try to make him feel inferior while seeming to give compliments.
🛌my muse’s biggest nightmare
Evie fears losing her family to a disaster of her own creation. She fears that Rick will someday take a bullet (or worse) for her, because she knows how precious she is to him. She fears losing Alex, her only child.
🎒what was my muse’s worst subject in school?
Sports. Evie attended a European day school in Cairo throughout her childhood, one that set a lot of store in physical activity, and while she loves to ride and swim, playing games and running about is not her idea of a good time.
🙉what are two things that make my muse uncomfortable in conversation
Evie hates it when people make comments about her Egyptian heritage or imply that it’s amazing how far she has come in academia and archaeology "for a woman". Increasingly throughout the 1930s, conversations about racial inferiority arises and leave Evie a seething mess. As a result, she is profoundly anti-Hitler and anti-racialist, and as shadows loom over Europe, joins societies promoting anti-fascist rhetoric. She doesn’t even get mad, just rueful, whenever Rick hauls off and punches fascists--something that happens regularly in late-1930s society, alas.
🚫what is one thing my muse wouldn’t want someone else to know about them?
After being invalided home from the War after the Battle of the Somme, Jonathan sleeps with his old knit toy, a stuffed bear called Archie that was a gift from his mum when he was a very small boy. Holding onto it at night gives him a sense of security and helps him to sleep. On the occasions that Jonathan has a companion at night, Archie disappears into a drawer, and he stays safely at home when Jonathan goes on a dig, but having him makes things a little easier, and Jonathan never puts him away for good.
🙅♂️what does my muse feel insecure about?
Jonathan was made to feel bad about being part Egyptian from childhood, when his schoolmasters routinely used his mixed race status as an indication of his foolishness. As a result, Jonathan has always had some imposter syndrome and a sense of having to work twice as hard to achieve the same results as his English classmates. Like Evie, he is heavily against fascism and racial intolerance as a result, and is happy to join Rick when the latter feels like punching fascists.
🙊what would my muse say their biggest flaw is
Back talk. Alex knows he isn’t supposed to sass adults, but sometimes he can’t help it. He comes by it naturally.
💚what does my muse get envious over?
Alex would dearly like to have a brother or sister and is puzzled why his parents, who so obviously love each other, haven’t produced more offspring. He asks Rick point blank about it once and Rick explains that though he and Evie would love to have more kids, it was very hard for her to get pregnant with Alex in the first place and things just haven’t worked out since.
✍️does my muse have a learning disability?
Alex sometimes finds it hard to focus and can go on what he and his family call a “spiral”: he gets one idea for one project, which leads to another idea, which leads to another, which leads to none of the projects actually getting finished unless someone intervenes and redirects him. It’s not until he is a grandfather himself that Alex learns the term “attention deficit disorder” and everything falls into place.
